I have a I7 920 still and overclock since i built my first computer. With the rig i use now, i have side step on so it stays low power until i game. Same thing with the video card stays clocked low until i game. When i game i want the most eye candy and smooth gaming. Usually eveything works the way i set it and i get better performance. I spent 1000 almost four years ago and still play most games with good frames. When i upgrade that is a thing i look for can i overclock? That is what this website has BURNED INTO MY BRAIN !!!!! And i love it.

When I played fps I did overclock but not anymore, I only play lol and wow and watch movies so no need for extra power. Now I value more the silence, low heat and less space for the pc case. It's more effective to have an ssd, that's what really makes the difference in overall performance.

Another Q6600 user here! Oc'd to 3.0GHz (just enough oc to not feel too slow in games, but not needlessly wasteful since I leave the machine on 24/7.
GTX670 running completely stock. There's really no point overclocking this GPU with the CPU above.

Reboots in 35 seconds flat, with a standard HDD. I'm a bit of an OCD tweaker. Using less than 100GB

I'm actually surprised there are so many here who haven't been overclocking. I figured I'd be the odd one out. With my last PC I did a lot of OCing, but ever since I got my 2500K about a year ago I haven't bothered. I really don't do much of anything that stresses out my PC so I've just left everything stock. I'm just not the gamer I once was and the games I do play are games that I can play with my friends, who have older laptops.

When you think about it, overclocking isn't really free performance. The money spent on fans and heatsinks does add up. I think of it more as a cheap upgrade when you hit the point you can't max something out. A heatsink is a lot cheaper than a new CPU.

Yes, but with water you can have a huge radiator and use low speed fans whose volume is below the noise floor of the room. With air, you have limited heatsink area so you need higher speed fans that are louder.

Permanent CPU overclock, my i7 930 (2.8ghz) is always at 4GHz which makes a huge difference in games, together with an H100 watercooling kit it never goes above 70c in gaming. Paired with an XFX 7970BE at 1100/1425.

i overclock my i5 to 4.2ghz while undervolted, at stock speeds i can get it stable with 0.9v-1.0v.
my gpu depends on if it supports sli or not
and i forgot my ram which i overclock to max because i can(600mhz overclock)

I only have a igpu with the core i5 atm so i can only slightly oc the igpu and cpu , using stock intel cooler too, not much room, but, will have a closed loop single rad system within next 2 weeks and a dedicated gpu too, then i will go troppo lol!!!

CPU only for now, although my mobo is good with overclocking i'm just afraid to mess with voltage so i just used ASUS's CPU level up to crank my i5 750 to 3.2GHz.

And i had no luck with overclocking my card as games seem to not like the overclock and crash or maybe i'm just doing it wrong, tho i'd prefer to have an aftermarket cooler for the GPU as with all stuff stock coolers aren't OC friendly

I'd have thought that there would be much more people OCing the GPU only vs OCing the CPU only. Also I would have never guessed 1 out 3 people on TPU don't OC at all.

Personally, only 24/7 OC I do is on the GPU and not to the max. I have a few profiles and only OC to the max for demanding games, which are like 2 or 3 lol.

On the CPU side I find that stock 2500k is enough and have only found minimal gains in the games that I've tested. So I rather have my sytem completely silent. I do OC it when I need to do a lot of 3D rendering (hours) but that's not too often, so I chose the "graphics only" option. I do plan OCing the CPU when it becomes a bottleneck tho.